Why do some teams become shining innovators and others struggle? Teams that collaborate to breakthrough are those that have a shared understanding of their roles and goals, and a deliberate approach to innovation. Teams trained in the breakthrough thinking process embrace diversity of thought and apply their collaborative preferences to solving the same problem.
This interactive session will explore the elements and flow of creative problem-solving. Attendees will learn practical techniques to unlock the innovative nature of every team member and discover the "wisdom of the crowd" - how the people on a self-directed team can wring out every last ounce of their creative best in service to their projects and each other.

You’ve probably been late to something once, only to find as you drive onto the freeway hoping that you can try to make up for some of that lost time, it’s backed up for what looks like miles and miles. You call your friend and update them that the 15 min drive is now looking like at least an hour. That’s just a guess, though, you really have no idea as you lack the visibility into the conditions of the bigger system that you’re now a part of. You’re probably annoyed too, because waiting and sitting in traffic is a waste of time and the person behind you is trying to honk their way through it! It'd be great if this 4-lane freeway were 6-lanes! Ugh!
The solution cities have historically taken to traffic problems has been to add more lanes (capacity) or more traffic signals (process). Similarities exist in software development, where in the spirit of trying to get more things done faster, often times more people are added or more process is enforced. While well intentioned, this can end up slowing things down even more.
In order to sustainably do more, faster, a solution we’ve found to be successful is to visualize our workflow and limit our work in progress. Traffic jams have become rare, and most importantly, value is delivered to customer’s with increased predictability, along with improvements to team morale.
In this session we’ll explore:
* What a work unit is
* Techniques to visualize and organize the flow of work
* Why we limit work in progress
* Finding the right work in progress limit for a team
* Pull versus push
* Going from good to great

Ethan Brooks is the North American Community Lead at Toptal, the world’s largest fully distributed company. In this presentation, he will reveal a major cause of burnout that isn’t often discussed along with actionable tips for avoiding it while increasing your productivity, delivering higher quality work, and freeing up time to pursue your other interests.
The information will be directed primarily towards employees and freelancers who work remotely but will have wider applications to all knowledge workers who are expected to consistently execute at the highest levels.

This talk is geared towards a non-technical audience interested in the magic and wonder of open source. We'll go over what open source is, why it's important, what it means to have an open source product and why it's important to customers.
What you'll learn:
- What it means to have an open source product, what open source actually means and the different types of open source products and business models that exist.
- What it's like to be involved in the open source community from the perspective of a user, a product manager and a developer.
- The challenges and opportunities related to community management and community involvement
- The best practices within open source product management

News

We'll be posting any News or update here, so please stay tuned for any important announcements.

Location

Our venue is Convene's midtown NYC location at 730 3rd Ave, where we'll be hosting along with other Open Camps events. We'll be posting further venue details here as the event approaches, including access and check-in procedures.

Team

Agency Camp is organized by a volunteer team from the open source community. If you'd like to get involved, please reach out to us by email .